March 2017: The perils of social media

• Presenters:

  • • Sheri Thompson, IT Communications & Planning Officer, Information Technology Services, Louisiana State University

    • Adam Hills-Meyer, Content Strategist, Division of Information Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• • Moderator: Paul Reaves, Georgia Southern University

  • Notetaker: Jennifer Bellenger, University of California, Berkeley

Resources

• • Presentation by Sheri Thompson (PDF)

  • Materials from Adam Hills-Meyer:

    • Digital Style Guide (PDF)

    • Social Media Style Guide (PDF)

  • Recording: https://educause.acms.com/p96pyoq8kbv/

Presentation Notes

"Not Just Another Tweet": Image, Brand and Standards (within social media)

March 10, 2017

Social Media Platforms Used by LSU/UW-Wisconsin IT Communications Staff

Both LSU and UW-Madison each manage their own IT Communications social media accounts, which are separate from their university’s Strategic Communications social media accounts.

• • Facebook (LSU, UW-Madison)

  • Twitter (LSU, UW-Madison)

  • YouTube (UW-Madison)

  • Instagram (UW-Madison)

  • Snapchat (UW-Madison)

Common advice for how to write great tweets

• • Know difference between voice and tone.

  • Keep things conversational.

  • Think about how your content will be consumed.

  • Have fun in the Twitter universe.

  • Incorporate humor, make it interesting or edgy, but…what if it all goes wrong?

LSU’s viral tweet gone wrong

In December, 2016, the week before finals, LSU’s course management system, Moodle, crashed. Sheri posted an update on Facebook, started monitoring activity on Twitter, and then created a hashtag that would come back to haunt her.

LSU identified the cause of Moodle’s crash was due to 20,000 inquiries to the Project Final Grade Feature, which allows students to see what score they needed on their final in order to get an A, B, C, or D. Trying to inject humor into the situation, Sheri used the hashtag #CantMakeThisUp to explain that the feature was being turned off to prevent the system from crashing.

After the tweet went viral, news outlets published articles about “Stressed LSU students” breaking the website before finals. Chronicle of Higher Ed contacted LSU for information. Strategic Communications was not happy about the press. It was a very stressful experience.

Lessons learned from a viral tweet gone wrong?

• • Think about the impact of your tweet on the brand and reputation of IT department and institution.

  • Transparency is not always welcome.

  • Humor and honesty are not always appreciated.

  • Tweets are short press releases.

  • Mistakes can happen, but it’s how you respond to them that’s most important.

UW-Wisconsin Social Philosophy (Adam Hills-Meyer)

• • We are human beings communicating with other human beings.

  • Engage users. Make sure they get the support they need when it comes to IT

  • Monitor all social networks for activity as it may be the only touch point a student will have with IT.

  • Outages are opportunities for wonderful customer service engagements. Allows you to have a relationship and conversation with people you normally wouldn’t.

  • Inject humor through GIFs sparingly (Jimmy Kimmel or Game of Thrones images are recognizable to users).

  • IT Communicators should try to cast a light on when there is an issue. If people know something is being worked on, that they are not alone, they feel better.

Advice for starting out on Social Media?

• • Use humor, GIFS.

  • Follow other people; if you follow people, they follow you.

  • Retweet stuff from people with larger audiences.

  • Consistent content. This is “feeding the animals”.

  • It takes time to build an audience on social media.

  • Be active - comment, like, share, heart.

  • The more you post, the more people will see your content.

  • Partner with groups (Housing, Student Affairs, Research) to build networks, who will support your messages on social media.

  • Social contests can work, depends on freebie giving away.

  • Doing something offbeat (LSU elf on the shelf visiting fiber cable, random places) drew attention among non-IT audience.

Social Media Planning Tips

• • Create a plan, set your goal for what you expect to do with your social media content.

  • Define audience. Students, faculty, staff. Not the whole world.

  • It’s okay to not only post about IT related things, take pride in your university.

  • Voice is constant across all communications. Tone can fluctuate.

  • Experiment to determine whether social sharing adds value to your websites, newsletters. UW-Wisconsin includes social shares within biweekly e-newsletter but not on home website as it wasn’t providing value.

  • You should always expect a crisis to arise. Have a guide for how you will respond to people during a crisis, whether an outage, service down, or something serious like an active shooter.

  • Always remember that you are dealing with the way people are feeling about an event. People are angry when their wifi goes down, it is personal to them. Try to do just the facts during crisis.

  • Respond specifically to users’ issues, make them feel supported by IT and the university as a whole.

  • Review policies on social media with CIO, CISO, etc. for approval.

  • Follow your university’s brand guidelines. There may be social media specific guidelines, including how to hashtags.

  • Hashtags are good for event-specific posts.

Times when posting to social media had backlash/wasn’t appropriate

• • Phishing attempt occurred that made it look like LSU had spread the phish; Strategic Communications made it very clear to not post through social media channels.

  • Take things offline when customers try to engage in desktop support requests, licensing details that are only applicable to subset of users. UW-Wisconsin is looking into ways to integrate the helpdesk with Twitter.

Challenges with using Social Media

• • Snapchat and Instagram seem to be the place where students are “hanging out” now. It is a challenge to create visually appealing/engaging media for these channels.

  • Video quality that IT is able to produce is not as nice as University Communications video quality. Must ensure they are polished.

  • Politics change year to year. Make sure your social media presence meshes with what is appropriate at the time. Standards vary.

  • Time sink. Have to check social media accounts before going to bed. Up to 25% of time.

  • Hashtag and handle battles can occur when other groups adopt your brand. Try to collaborate with others to come up with solutions.

  • Regarding hashtags, be aware that meanings can change to something you don’t want them to be.